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I’m staring out the window, thinking how dreary it is right now. It’s pouring rain, the sky is gray, and the trees have lost most of their leaves. Sigh.

Yow, I need something to lift this blue mood I’m in! As usual, aromatherapy to the rescue! And this is definitely a case where I like to use my tea light candle oil diffuser, as it makes the scent last a long time. As a cautionary note, remember not to take any of these oils internally or use them on your skin until you research them thoroughly. Not all essential oils can be taken internally and/or used topically.

My favorite mood elevator is Rose essential oil (rosa damascena). One drop of this heavenly scent in a diffuser is enough to make me feel happy! However, rose essential oil is extremely expensive.

A cheaper (although still not cheap) alternative to rose essential oil is geranium (pelargonium graveolens), sometimes called rose geranium. When you smell geranium essential oil, you won’t believe how much it smells like rose essential oil! And again, one drop in a diffuser is plenty. At least it’s economical to use!

Roman Chamomile essential oil (anthemis nobilis) is renowned for its ability to calm people down. It can be somewhat sedating, so use it only when you know you don’t have to be completely alert. Don’t confuse Roman Chamomile with German Chamomile (matricaria recutita). They are very different essential oils.

Lavender essential oil (lavandula augustifolia) is also wonderful for making happy thoughts. It smells so clean and fresh.

The citrus oils are also known as mood elevators. One of my favorite citrus essential oils is mandarin (citrus reticulata). Don’t confuse mandarin essential oil with tangerine essential oil. Even though they smell similar, tangerine essential oil does not have the anthranilic acid ester that makes mandarin oil so good for anxiety. In his book Advanced Aromatherapy, Kurt Schnaubelt notes that Mandarin essential oil is also suitable for “children suffering from anxiety, nervousness, or stress” (p. 77).

Although I love the scent of patchouli (pogostemon cablin) and vetiver (vetiveria zizanoides) essential oils, I wouldn’t use them on a day when I need my mood lifted. They are known as dark, heavy, earthy scents and aren’t the best for feeling happier when you feel a bit down.

A quick look at some of my references gives a list of essential oils that are known as mood elevators. They are the kinds of oils that give you a “feel good feeling” when you have a mild case of the blues. Here are some other essential oils recommended for “despondency” by Shirley Price in her Aromatherapy Workbook:

Bergamot, Neroli and Petitgrain (all are varieties of citrus aurantium)
Clary Sage (salvia sclarea)
Coriander (coriandrum sativum)
Cypress (cupressus sempervirens)
Ginger (zingiber officinale)
Melissa (melissa officinalis)
Niaouli (melaleuca quinquenervia)
Rosewood (aniba rosaeodora)
Sandalwood (santalum album)
Ylang Ylang (cananga odorata)

There are other mood elevating essential oils out there, and the fun of aromatherapy is in the discovery of how a particular essential oil affects you. You might want to compile your own personal “blue day” essential oils list so that it’s handy the next time you feel a bit down.

Remember that these oils are traditionally used for an occasional feeling of sadness or anxiety or just feeling “down in the dumps”. If you have a serious case of depression, you need to be under a doctor’s care.

Years ago, I got my introduction to aromatherapy from my massage therapist. She casually mentioned that whenever she was around someone coughing, sneezing and generally acting flu-like or cold-like, she would take out a bottle of cinnamon bark essential oil (cinnamomum zeylanicum, sometimes called cinnamomum verum) and put a drop on the bottom of her feet. She swore by this method, and said it prevented colds and the flu.

Now I’ve got to tell you, I thought this was all pretty weird. Put cinnamon bark essential oil on your feet, and prevent colds and the flu?

However, now that I’m a little older and wiser, and I know a bit more about aromatherapy and essential oils, I know exactly why my massage therapist used cinnamon bark oil to prevent colds and the flu. Although, truthfully, I can’t recommend putting cinnamon bark essential oil on the skin!

Cinnamon bark essential oil is what I refer to as a “little bomb” in the land of aromatherapy. What I mean by that is that it is extremely powerful and kills lots of nasty bacteria, viruses, etc. According to Kurt Schnaubelt in Medical Aromatherapy: Healing With Essential Oils,

“[C]innamon bark oil is effective against 98 percent of all pathogenic… bacteria. It is also effective against yeasts, candida.. and fungi, including aspergillus…. It is antiparasitic and prevents fermentation in the intestines; it is effective against diarrhea, colitis, amoebic dysentery, enterotoximia, bacterial cystitis, and urinary tract infections with E. coli….” (p. 215)

Many authors and scientific articles note cinnamon bark essential oil’s potent anti-viral uses, as well. And that explains why my massage therapist used it to fight off cold and flu viruses. As Jeanne Rose notes in 375 Essential Oils and Hydrosols, cinnamon bark oil is “Antispasmotic, anti-infectious, antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal particularly against Candida and Aspergillus” (p. 66).

Whew! You can see why I call cinnamon bark essential oil a “little bomb”. It is amazingly powerful against an amazingly wide number of bacteria, viruses and fungi.

However, the other reason I call cinnamon bark essential oil a “little bomb” is that the power of the oil comes at a price. Cinnamon bark essential oil is extremely irritating to the skin. It is one of the “hottest” oils I can think of, and I do everything I can to avoid ever getting the undiluted oil near my lips or tongue. Ow! I have never seen an aromatherapy or essential oil expert recommending that you put undiluted cinnamon bark essential oil on your skin. It is also extremely irritating to mucosal skin if it is over-diffused. In other words, if you’re going to put it in a diffuser, diffuse it only for very short periods of time. I haven’t yet tried diffusing cinnamon bark oil, but if I did, it would be for 5 minutes or less and I would never stand directly over the diffuser and inhale.

Usually, cinnamon bark oil is taken internally (one drop in a capsule is plenty), or it is diluted and mixed with other essential oils. It is definitely not for the absolute beginner who knows nothing about essential oils. I would recommend reading Medical Aromatherapy: Healing With Essential Oils before even attempting to work with cinnamon bark essential oil.

And remember to wear gloves and/or wash your hands with soap and water thoroughly after handling a bottle of cinnamon bark essential oil!

You may be wondering why my massage therapist put the oil on the bottom of her feet (at least that skin is nice and tough on most people — but not on babies and children!). Believe it or not, the feet are one of the places where essential oils are most easily absorbed. But that’s a topic for another blog entry…

I just found a great soap making site, with tons and tons of information. Its called teachsoap.com. There are all kinds of instructions and recipes, and a great section called Ask Anne-Marie.

Ask Anne-Marie is a treasure-trove of questions and answers about soap-making. I found this site because I was looking for instructions on how much essential oil should be added to a batch of soap. (Anne-Marie recommends starting with 1/2 ounce per pound of soap, but I’m thinking that with something like Rose or Geranium, you’d need way less than that. And remember that when soap makers refer to “ounces” of oil or anything else, they are talking about the WEIGHT, not the volume.)

I’m a melt-and-pour kind of soap maker. Never could get up the nerve to work with lye, since I can be klutzy sometimes.

Anyway, I thought you soap fiends would enjoy the site. There’s also information on the site about pricing and selling your soaps.

While I was reading one of my aromatherapy books yesterday, I came across an interesting “fun fact” about lemon essential oil (citrus limon). It’s great for mental concentration and clear thinking. Who couldn’t use some more of that?

According to The Essential Oils Desk Reference Third Edition, researchers in Japan found that diffused lemon essential oil resulted in 54% fewer errors in an office. (Diffused jasmine and lavender resulted in 33% and 20% fewer errors, respectively.) When oils were diffused during test-taking, scores increased as much as 50%!

Wow! See if you can convince the proctor to diffuse lemon oil while your kid is taking the SAT!

Well, I have to say that the concoction I put together yesterday really did help. My head felt like it was stuffed with styrofoam peanuts when I woke up! And I had this horrible dry cough that was making me feel like my abdominal muscles would burst out of my skin.

After sitting in my kitchen with my aromatherapy mixture in the diffuser, I started to feel better. My dry, rattling cough became “productive”, which means the congestion in my chest was breaking up. And my nose started running, so ditto for my head congestion.

I used a combination of eucalyptus radiata and eucalyptus globulus essential oils and I added essential oil of lemon (citrus limon). Both chemotypes of eucalyptus are known as effective expectorants. Eucalyptus globulus is also known as a “mucolytic”, which means it dissolves or breaks down mucus.

The lemon essential oil was added to the mixture mainly because of its air-disinfecting properties. And darn it, it smells great, too!

I just love a shopping bargain, don’t you? I’m always getting online coupons emailed to me by various websites, and this morning I got two of them.

JCPenney has a coupon that’s only good on Sunday, October 15, from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. You get 20% off your online purchase, and it doesn’t look like there are any minimum spending requirements.

Enter the code 37FRIEND in the promotional box as you check out.

Blair.com has an offer of $15.00 off a $75.00 purchase from their website. The offer expires October 17.

Enter the code 160719 in the promotional box as you check out.

Enjoy!

Oh, Lordy. I am just kicking myself for not ordering a nebulizing aromatherapy diffuser! I woke up yesterday with laryngitis, stuffed-up head and congestion, and a dry, rattling cough. Argh! Isn’t it a bit early for this kind of thing. I mean, Fall just began!

I put together an essential oil mixture and put it in my potpourri / aromatherapy diffuser, but it’s not the same as having a nebulizing diffuser. The great thing about the nebulizing diffusers is that they don’t use heat, and they turn the essential oils into tiny air-borne molecules so you can breathe them into your lungs.

The mixture I made up smelled great, and when I was standing over it, it definitely helped my congestion. But darn it, I’m gonna get a nebulizing diffuser right now!

Here’s the mixture I used:

Cold and Congestion Aromatherapy Recipe

4 drops Eucalyptus globulus essential oil
4 drops Eucalyptus radiata essential oil
6 drops lemon essential oil (citrus limon)

The lemon essential oil smelled great, and it’s known as one of the best ways to disinfect the air. Of course, I’m already infected. LOL

Here are some Jasmine (jasminum officinale) “fun facts”:

It takes about 1,000 pounds of Jasmine blossoms to make 1 pound of Jasmine oil.

That’s about 3.6 million blossoms!

Jasmine blooms at night, and the blossoms last only one day. They must be picked before sunrise, or most of the scent will have disappeared.

Jasmine oil isn’t a true “essential oil”. Rather, it is an “absolute”. Absolutes are made by adding alcohol to the blossoms to extract the aromatic molecules. Then the alcohol is evaporated, leaving the absolute, which is rather thick. A trace amount of the alcohol solvent may remain in the final product, which is one reason why absolutes are generally not used in therapeutic aromatherapy.

We have an indoor jasmine plant (subspecies Sambac) and we adore it. It blooms all year long, and when just one bloom opens up in the evening, you can smell the incredible scent of jasmine the moment you walk into the room! This year, we also grew Jasmine Sambac in our garden, and they did quite well. We’ll see if they are winter-hardy.

If you have toenail fungus, then you know how tough it is to get rid of! And you know how hard on the liver the oral anti-fungal drugs are.

I’ve heard a lot of people tell about success treating toenail fungus with tea tree oil (melaleuca alternifolia). Even Dr. Andrew Weil recommends using tea tree oil on toenail fungus.

Tea tree oil is one of only two essential oils (the other is lavender essential oil) that there is nearly universal agreement on, regarding their safety for external use. Practically every expert I can think of agrees that tea tree oil can be applied “neat” (straight out of the bottle) to skin. (However, don’t use it neat on mucosal skin, like inside your mouth, nose, vagina, etc. Oww!)

Dr. Weil recommends painting the affected toenail twice a day for at least 2 months. It will probably take longer than that to see results. You can simply wet a Q-Tip with the tea tree essential oil and apply it to the entire toenail.

Tea tree oil is inexpensive, and doesn’t require you to get your liver tested, unlike oral prescription antifungals!

Here’s something you can try that’s really fun: making your own little pots of solid perfume!

It’s definitely something you’ll need to experiment with, so try it in small batches first. Here’s what you do:

Solid Perfume With Essential Oils: Directions

Melt together one part beeswax and three parts jojoba or fractionated coconut oil until the beeswax is melted. Using a double boiler is best, because then you don’t risk burning the mixture.

Let cool slightly until the mixture just starts to thicken. Then add 8 to 15 drops of your favorite essential oils or aromatherapy blend. Blend/mix thoroughly.

Pour into little pots, such as lip balm containers. It should be solid in a half-hour or so.

Wear this mixture by rubbing a small amount on the inside of your wrists.

Notes:

1. Beeswax can be found in craft stores, either as solid blocks or in convenient “beads” or granules.

2. You can add all of one kind of essential oil, or mix some different ones together. Definitely experiment with the mixture before you attempt to make solid perfume.

3. Mixture too thin? Add more beeswax.

4. Mixture too thick? Add more jojoba or fractionated coconut oil. BTW, the use of jojoba or fractionated coconut oil cuts down dramatically on rancidity. Jojoba is a wax, not a true oil, and fractionated coconut oil has an extremely long shelf life.

5. Scent doesn’t last long enough for you? Try adding a few more drops of essential oil to your next batch. Experiment until you get the scent and the longevity you like.

6. AVOID skin irritant essential oils, such as cinnamon, thyme and oregano. (There are more; those are just a few examples).

7. You can get lip balm pots in craft stores, or you can use any small hinged box, such as a pill box.

Here’s one of my favorite essential oil combinations:

Evening of Love (smells best in warm weather)
2 drops Patchouli essential oil (pogostemon cablin)
2 drops Lavender essential oil (lavandula augustifolia)
3 drops Ylang ylang essential oil (cananga odorata)
2 drops Jasmine essential oil (jasminum offcinale)